Page 11 - Final Template Pat Brown

How Do Women reputation of the firm had to evoke trust and
security. That does not mean to say bigger is
better. It does mean the firm’s reputation is
Choose a Financial Planner -- stellar. What about costs? In 95% of the re-
spondents cost was not even in the top three
criteria. How about the sex of a financial
Who Do They Trust? advisor? That doesn’t show up as even being
in the top 10 reasons for choosing an advi-
sor. Remember the Mel Gibson movie “What
Women Want?” Well the answer is loyalty,
trustworthiness and of course personal atten-
tion. What will the level of communication be, because we need
to stay informed? As we know women are information gatherers.
Many women have found themselves on the horns of this di- We get our information from TV, radio, books, magazines and the
lemma. Increases in divorce, death of a spouse, inheritance, and Internet. Yet we rely often on the oldest form of communication,
sudden success of a business, are but a few of the events that and that is word of mouth. A decision was made to research San
Diego Financial Advisors
and since we were some-
what surprised that the sex
of advisors didn’t matter,
we chose to look at some
men who advise women.
Now keep in mind that this
is neither an endorsement
nor a testimonial from San
Diego Woman Magazine.
It is just our research
report. Addressing the
issue of brand loyalty we
found several good com-
panies. Morgan Stanley
Smith Barney seemed to
come up frequently. We
were impressed on how
they have survived the
financial crisis we have San Diego
seen throughout the past Woman
5 years. It appears their
global research capabili-
ties were a factor. Low risk
investments have been the 11
mainstay of their recom-
mendations. But what was
interesting to us was how
they have developed the
team approach by pairing
Financial Advisors so they
may work together and
complement each other. In
San Diego we found such
a team. Dax Fletcher and
Ardo Peltekian, otherwise
known as The Fletcher
Peltekian Group* at
Morgan Stanley Smith
Barney. They have been
cause women to seek help making sound financial decisions Financial Advisors (FA’s
and appropriate planning. The question is a long standing one is the industry term) for many years. They worked together as a
however; today there are so many choices and everyone has an team at a bank that no longer exists. That aside, they decided to
answer or a suggestion. The options are dizzying. So we did our team up to provide their clients what they wanted. The problem at
own research. We reviewed many reports and chose the June the bank was that they had no time to develop a personal relation-
11, 2011 report from the Nielsen consumer information company. ship with people. They covered 7 branches of the bank where
The report has some interesting statistics. Not too surprising the they got customers, but not clients. We asked how they decided
answer to our question garnered some standard responses. For to go to Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and Ardo said they wanted
example how a woman hires a financial advisor depends on age, a solution based career and not a product based one, and the op-
social background and of course circumstances. But there were portunity to build relationships. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney was
some surprises too. Nielsen found that the number one driver their first choice. Dax emphasized that he and Ardo are married
in making this decision was – brand quality. In other words the family men. Though they work long hours they make sure